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Now, would not it be great if the prefab industry could build extremely beautiful and gorgeous looking homes in a week - homes that would satisfy every individual whim and taste and still be very, very cheap and affordable to everyone ?

That would of course be great ! But the problem has always been satisfying every individual taste and yet making prefabricated homes easily affordable to the vast majority of the people. You see, if prefab homes have to be made affordable, then at least a few designs would have to be mass produced. And if just a few designs were to be mass produced, then a majority of the homes will start looking and feeling the same. And people always want their homes to be better looking than their neighbours' homes. Which essentially means that mass producing homes may not work. So prefabricated homes cannot always be made cheaper than homes built the regular way.

But still, the prefab industry offers a ray of hope for today's environmentally conscious people. They do have their strengths. But like many other promising things in life, not everything about them may be hunky-dory either. Here is a brief list of the tradeoffs ...

The Good - Why A Pre-Fabricated Home

Prefabricated homes are fast to build, and they are not as damaging to the environment as building a home the regular way could be. They offer the potential to reduce wastage and offer the benefits of mass production - lower prices, faster and easier to build, and a range of designs to choose from.
Fewer defects, much faster construction, lesser skill requirements, reduced energy consumption and wastage are possible the chief benefits of prefabricated homes. But that is not all - in colder climates, faster construction is essential because the building period is relatively shorter. And prefab homes reduce the amount of disruption the neighbours will have to put up with.
If you have deep pockets and relatively expensive tastes and are very environmentally conscious, the a prefabricated home may be just what may be good for you.

The Bad - Just How Much Does It Cost ?

No prefabricated home manufacturer may be able to give you a quote without seeing the site where the home will be built. And the final cost may depend on many factors and so it may be almost impossible to get a good idea of what the home is going to cost before the manufacturer has had a chance to get to see the site and talk with you about your tastes and requirements.
Though prefab homes are said to be available at all budgets, it does help if money is not a constraint as some of the best designs - especially the very high end high tech designs - do cost quite some money to build. The low cost designs may not be very appealing to everyone.
The truly lovely prefabricated designs are still designed mainly for the high income families and affordable prefabricated home designs that appeal to a large percentage of the population may not yet be exactly around the corner.

And The Downright Ugly - What Are The Disadvantages ?

Many of the supposed advantages of prefabricated homes are still hotly contested and may still need to be proven definitively. Some people opine that prefabricated homes actually may cost more than traditional homes. And prefabricated homes are manufactured at factories that have fixed overheads - labour, plant and machinery and more - and this makes it difficult for the prefabricated industry to respond to changing market conditions.
To manufacture homes at very low costs, the prefabricated industry will have to mass produce homes in very large quantities. But for that to happen, the prefab industry will need to have very large capacities. Unless this happens, the costs of prefabricated homes may not drop very appreciably.
And contrary to what may appear to be the case, prefabricated homes may actually need a lot more skilled labour to precisely assemble factory made parts. Otherwise, all the benefits of prefabricated homes may not be available to the occupants of the homes.
Also, there seems to be scanty evidence that prefabricated homes actually reduce wastage. In case there is a problem with a design that already has become very popular, then lots of homes will have to be repaired because they would all have been mass produced. This could actually increase the amount of wastage in manufacture and transport.
Then there is the question of value - will most people be willing to pay as much for prefabricated homes as they would for a traditional home built using methods they have become so familiar comfortable with ?
That said, the prefabricated industry is still in its infancy and offers several advantages including the potential to reduce the harmful impact on the environment - something that could become a very important concern in the near future. But arriving at designs that are both affordable and appealing to the majority of the people and environmentally friendly may still be a long way to go.